Saed Bannoura

Note: this biography may be incomplete or out
of date. Extension/update suggestions are welcome.

Saed Bannoura (b. 1973) is a Palestinian journalist working for the Bethlehem-based IMEMC (www.imemc.org). Saed currently lives in the United States. He is confined to a wheelchair since
1991 after being shot repeatedly by an Israeli death squad, who had infiltrated a demonstration in Bethlehem. In his own words:

When the man noticed that I had realized their true identify he pulled a small automatic gun from under his shirt,
and I ran away knowing that even if I surrendered to him then, I would have been immediately assassinated, as had happened to so many Palestinian martyrs before me.

The man ran after me, along with the other undercover death squad members, until I came to an area were he was standing above me on a hill, just five meters away from me. When he shouted at me
again, I began to turn, and I could see his eyes, or at least, what was visible of them from under his mask. It was at that moment that he started to shoot.

After five or six rounds penetrated my chest and back, I fell to the ground, motionless, soaked with my own blood. I could not feel anything, I could not see clearly, and I could not hear
anything.

I fell down face first, injuring my face and breaking my teeth on the ground. Then the man approached me and kicked me in my chest, breaking four ribs, in order to flip me over onto my back.

The last thing I heard before I passed out was that man who shot me saying, "After all that, and you're still alive!?"